Banana Banana
by Omnicat
Summary: Just another day for two wanted terrorists hiding in dad's tropical paradise resort.


**Title:** Banana Banana

**Author:** Omnicat

**Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge:** Spoilers until ep 11, and one little detail from ep 17.

**Warnings:** None.

**Pairings:** None.

**Summary:** Just another day for two wanted terrorists hiding in dad's tropical paradise resort.

**Author's Note:** Set somewhere between ep 12 and 17, when Duo and Quatre are in hiding together in what looks like a rather luxurious oasis. I've always wanted to write a fic about that.

**II-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-I-oOo-I-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-II**

**Banana Banana**

Once upon a time, everything went to hell. The mission failed, the operation as a whole was shut down, and a comrade killed himself. There was a lot more to it, but in short, life sucked and there was nothing they could do about it. The end.

Except that it didn't feel like anything had ended to the ones involved. They were just... stuck.

"I could've thought of worse hide-outs," Duo had said when Quatre first showed him around the place he'd invited him to after the end-that-was-not-an-end. He'd whistled too, because it expressed his sheer awe at the place better than any words he knew. Quatre's family's grand villa in its lush oasis in the middle of the desert was more luxury, nature and old-fashioned romance than he'd ever seen before. And there was a _pool_. For _swimming_.

Life sucked right around then, but it did bring Duo the opportunity to learn how to swim. So he did. And Quatre showed him all kinds of fancy swimming strokes with even fancier names, most of which he forgot again immediately because they were fancy but useless. Still, it was a better way to pass the time than going over old facts over and over and over, and listening for news that wasn't coming.

Unfortunately, Duo was about as fit as a teenage boy could get, so he could keep at it all day long, provided that the weather cooperated - which it did. As a result, he got the hang of swimming long before either he or Quatre could think of what to do about their aborted mission.

"You come up with anything tonight?" Duo asked, as always, over their breakfast of canned food - the only thing that broke their outward appearance of being on a tropical vacation.

"Nothing." Quatre answered with a dejected sigh. He poked at his food; he never ate with quite as much gusto as Duo. "You?"

"Nothing."

And so began another day of terrorists on leave in paradise.

Momentarily tired of spending all day getting wrinkly, Duo took only a short, fully-clothed dive (in a shirt and pants borrowed from Quatre, because his own would boil him alive in the sun when wet and roast him when dry) before setting out into the oasis greenery to explore. Quatre had told him there were a lot of edible fruit-bearing plants to be found, and he had sorely neglected his scavenger's roots so far.

Duo had never seen a coconut before, but he knew what they were supposed to look like, and that's what he went looking for first. He wanted to see the look on Quatre's face when he asked him "Wanna see my big hairy balls?". Instead, what caught his eye in the treetops were large bundles of yellow. It stopped him in his tracks for a moment. He had never seen such huge flowers. How had he not noticed those when they first came here and checked the entire oasis to make sure it was safe?

Then it hit him; he _had_ noticed them before, but not as flowers. They were bananas!

Duo was halfway up one of the trees before the grin on his face had even finished widening. Bananas were even better than coconuts. He'd had these once before, and it was the most delicious thing he had ever tasted. He'd filed the knowledge of their presence away at first because there had been more pressing matters to attend to, but now he didn't care if he had to tear down all the vines and leaves growing around the stem before he could pull himself up without sliding down again, and didn't stop climbing until he could reach out and grab a big, brightly coloured banana from the cluster drooping down beside him.

Breathing heavily from excitement more than exertion, he stuck the first fruit in the waistband of his borrowed pants and reached for another. He'd gotten five of them before -

- movement, screeching, a face -

"HYAAAAAGH!"

How he managed to fall out of the palm tree backwards and still land on his feet, he would never know. And that, he would never admit, hard-pressed though he was by shock and Quatre's immediate, gun-toting rush towards him. But whatever he might have said, coherent or incoherent, failed to be vocalized for the simple reason that the thing that had scared him _was still there_.

"Oh wow..." Quatre said, when he caught sight of what Duo was pointing and making spluttering noises at.

"_Wow?"_ Duo looked at him incredulously and finally found back his tongue. "What the hell kind of mutated freak rat is that?!" He turned his eyes back to the creature, not trusting the racket it was making to stay safely up in the tree. "It's huge!"

Quatre laughed, but in a delighted way that kept Duo from even being able to get angry at him for it. "That's not a rat, it's a monkey."

"...monkey?"

"Surely you've heard of them?"

"Well, yeah, but..." He awkwardly balled a hand in his hair, not quite willing to admit that he'd heard of them from a severely inebriated old man who, honestly, he wasn't sure was any more lucid when sober. "I was told they looked like hairy mini-humans. Not... like..."

"Huge mutated freak rats?" Quatre finished for him.

Duo mumbled something about the rats back home being only a size or two away from this thing. Quatre stifled a laugh behind his hand.

"Well... this one is one of the less aesthetically pleasing species, I suppose. Though maybe he'd look less ferocious if he stopped screaming." Quatre looked at the fruit stuck in Duo's pants. "Were you stealing his bananas?"

"Stealing?! Last I checked monkey-boy hadn't paid for these either!"

"He doesn't seem to think so."

And neither did his friends. Suddenly, monkeys started screeching in the trees all around Duo and Quatre. A chill enveloped them, with no regard whatsoever to the stifling heat. They exchanged nervous, loaded glances and turned back to the villa as one, Duo tightly clutching the bananas in his waistband.

"So, when's the next news broadcast?"

"Not until a few hours! Had I shown you the french butterfly stroke yet?"

"I dunno, but let's find out, huh, buddy?"

"My thoughts exactly, my friend!"

And they forced themselves to laugh until they'd left the ruckus of the monkeys behind them. Then they exchanged another, relieved, look and laughed even harder, this time at themselves.


End file.
